Reviewing the Drama: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Ballet, Movies, and TV Reviews

I knew I shouldn't have seen this. It didn't appeal to me, but I knew an actor I like was in it, and the timing and location of the screening worked perfectly, so I saw Brooklyn . I should have trusted my instincts. Brooklyn  follows Eilis ( Saoirse Ronan ), a young Irish woman who feels there's nothing for her (no career, no man) in the Emerald Isle and sets out to make a new life in the titular New York City borough, circa the early 1950s. A New York-based Irish priest has helped book her passage, and sets Eilis up at a boarding house that's run by Mrs. Kehoe, who, as played by Julie Walters , provides much needed comic relief. Eilis is feeling homesick and having trouble coming out of her shell but begins to blossom and cotton to Brooklyn when a local Italian guy, Tony (the dull Emory Cohen ), woos her. And this is where you start to lose me. Tony doesn't seem to be anything other than a male who is paying Eilis some attention. Sure, he seems to have a c...

Reese Witherspoon is back in top form. (Not that she was ever bad in a film, but she was good in some lousy or fluffy flicks.) Wild invites us to go on a journey with Cheryl Strayed , a woman who reacts to her mother's death by spiraling out of control. (This is a true story; the film is based on Strayed's memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail . Nick Hornby wrote the adapted screenplay.) Cheryl's mom, Bobbi ( Laura Dern , also wonderful), was the love of Cheryl's life. When Bobbi passed away at just 45, Cheryl (Witherspoon) became reckless, promiscuous and a (somewhat) functioning junkie, ruining her marriage (to Paul, played by Thomas Sadoski ) in the process. Her mother had always encouraged her to "stand in the face of beauty," but Cheryl also remembered her mother saying, "I never got to be myself." So Cheryl set off to hike the Pacific Crest Trail by herself, to try to "become the woman [her] mother raised....